I’m a fine one to talk, as I don’t do this – but well, from an individual I think that’s okay.

But tonight I watched Gordon Ramsey’s ‘Kitchen Nightmares’ programme, where Gordon came to Nottingham to help sort out ‘The Curry Lounge’ in the city centre.  But that’s by the by, I’m a fan of his anyway, so was intrigued to see him at work in my beloved hometown.

And what struck me was that the interludes in and around the city were the amongst the best portrayal I’ve ever seen of Nottingham on the telly.  Normally it’s a pair of fuckwits – that patronising bastard and his pinch-faced harridan of a sidekick – on Channel Four, taking a bunch of shoddy statistics and suggesting that it’s a den of iniquity and the fourth worst place to live in the country.

So how nice to see, in a few short segments, shots of the square – the view of the city from Trent Bridge, a bit of the culture and people who weren’t either drug dealers, chavs or leering mongs.  It was the best piece of PR that Nottingham has had in ages – and it happened completely by accident because a restaurant happened to apply to be on Gordon’s show.

So take note powers-that-be at the council etc.  I want to see more of this kind of representative imagery relating to Nottingham in the future, rather than the usual dirge of binge-drinking or gun crime that the media usually regurgitates with regular and inaccurate tedium.

It’s the annual C&MI Christmas Party on thursday, so if you see a bunch of people dressed in outlandish fancy dress costumes then be sure to say hello!

I’m not feeling remotely festive this year – I’m not a big fan of Christmas in it’s superficial nor spiritual sense anyway, but usually look forward to festivities and a chance for a bit of downtime amongst family and friends with lots of food and drink.  Maybe once I get my costume all packed up to take to work on thursday it will all start to feel more real.

I have managed to get all my festive shopping done and dusted though, I did have a brief excursion to my employer but as last year, a good 90%+ has been completed through the wonderful phenomena of online retail.  I don’t like being amongst crowds of people (except at football, of course!) nor do I like shopping – so getting stuff online, generally for better prices, and delivered straight to you has to be a winner!

Felt what could be a cold coming on today, and since Cat had an evil one last week, I’ve been assaulting my nostril’s with Vicks ‘First Defense’ which supposedly should have a decent chance of stopping a cold developing if you catch it early – it better bleedin’ well had do, it’s our Christmas party next week and I don’t plan on being ill for it!

I had a rather pisspoor game of football last night – and whatever it was that prevented me running about much and made all my passes go astray, it clearly affected Forest too.  That said, Forest were playing our perpetual bogey-team Walsall – so a defeat wasn’t exactly unexpected when visiting the Bescott Stadium.

…. BRING ON THE SCOUSERS!!! 🙂 *

* Should Forest beat Luton in the FA Cup 2nd Round, we get to play the red scum at the City Ground!

.. after bemoaning my footballing lot yesterday, I was lucky that the Virgin Media chappie arrived very much in time for me to play football, I lost count of goals – but I think I netted five in all, but most importantly two against Sanj who has proven unbeatable for me in the past when he has a spell in goal!

Virgin Media TV looks okay – not dramatically different to when I had it back in a rented house in Wollaton, but Setanta sports will come in handy – and the TV on demand feature is pretty damn funky, I’ve already partaken in an episode of Green Wing – all of which are saved on there, and it played perfectly!

Tomorrow finally Forest are playing again – entertaining Crewe at home, so fingers crossed for that one, and failing getting any enjoyment from that, we’re hot footing it to a pub afterwards to watch Derby entertain Chelsea, which should surely be rewarding?

.. this has been a week of frustrations, it’s a pretty busy time for me at work, so to find out something we’ve been working on was rendered useless by some errors that weren’t really our doing was frustrating – but I suppose that’s life!

This busy-ness was compounded by me needing Wednesday morning off to attend a mysterious appointment the hospital made with me – only to find it was routine, and not only that, completely unnecessary as I had been for the same thing earlier in the year, but they’d lost my records!  Ah well, it was nice of the doctor himself to take some time out I suppose, I need to go back now for an ECG scan… bah!

The final frustration came this evening, at football I was on “the team that shall not pass” – which was annoying, the couple of times I was deigned acceptable to pass to when getting forward I scored, twice!  We wouldn’t have lost if we’d played like a team instead of trying to give it the ‘flash Harry’ types – that is irksome.  But never mind!

I guess the next thing to frustrate me will be that I need to be home tomorrow afternoon and await a Virgin Media engineer, who will turn up between 1pm and 6pm – if he turns up before 3:00pm, I’ll be delighted as I’ll get a game of football that will hopefully be more satisfying than this evening’s – that said, he’ll turn up at 5:59pm rendering yet another afternoon away from work utterly pointless, knowing my luck!

Ho hum!

.. as given by me in the guise of Chewbacca for Radio Nottingham during the world-record wobble board attempt on Friday in aid of Children in Need!

A more sensible interview post-wobble actually aired apparently, but this one is more amusing!  Thanks to Neil for digging it out for me!

Normally I’m quite a cynical person when it comes to the motivations and greed of your average human, so it was nice to get my yearly fix of positivity by manning the phones at Boots to take pledges for Children in Need.  I’ve done so for around four years now, and it never fails to leave me with a reassured warm feeling, after speaking to so many kind-hearted folks.

“I’m so sorry, love, I can only afford to pledge £25”, one lady kept saying – which, of course, once you factor in Gift Aid is actually £32 anyway, and £32 more than the majority of the population stump up!  After a slow start on the phones for us, it was a successful night by finishing time at 2am – with us taking just shy of £250,000 over the phone, and the whole campaign beating the £19million mark on the night.

But that was very much the latter half of the story for me.  You see Boots, my esteemed employers, are big supporters of Children in Need.  And this year they wanted to smash our previous fund-raising efforts at both Head Office and around the stores by smashing £1million pounds for the charity – which I’m pleased to report was successful!

There were the usual auctions and cake stalls, the Marketing team which my team falls under setup a Market, my team opted for fancy dress which saw me dressed as Chewbacca from around 9am – 2am as I still wore the costume whilst manning the phones!  Also, it’s worth noting Katie “the foghorn” successfully completed a 6.5 hour silence – and raised over £200 in the process – I was very proud, as I didn’t think she could remain silent for that long!

But perhaps the best bit of the day for me was a genius idea cooked up by some people who work in a different bit of the business.  They decided they wanted to break a world record, and for me personally I was amazed they picked the said same record I would have picked if I had the choice.  That was to have the most simultaneous wobble-board players playing along to ‘Tie me Kangaroo Down, Sport’ continuously for five minutes.

And that’s just what we did – I gladly volunteered to help, and so it was Chewbacca was wandering around the carpark trying to get people to stand in the right places.  I’d bagged myself a spot in the front row, because some of our data suppliers had been very kind in sponsoring us, and was a little bit alarmed to find the head of the company standing next to me just before the start!  But we had a good laugh – and indeed met again later at the call-centre!

The record attempt was duly broken, subject to official confirmation, so have that Airmiles who previously held it!  The final frolic of the day for me was the Space Hopper race.  Now, I’m not quite sure how I managed to qualify for the final as there is video footage of me racing Mikey that does appear to show Mikey winning – however, equally I think I was robbed in the final.  A desperate headlong lunge, I’m convinced, shows me crossing the line just ahead of the competition!

However, it probably did class as unsporting conduct, and the race organisers did award me a prize for second place – so I’m actually very chuffed indeed!  All in all, an absolutely exhausting but very fun day indeed, so if you saw a giant Wookie on telly during Children in Need (and there were at least a couple of opportunities!), then that was me!  I’ve yet to determine whether I successfully managed to do “rabbit ears” behind Des Coleman (Lenny from Eastenders!) head yet!

For those of you not part of the ubiquitous Facebook wildfire that seems to be consuming the world, then sign up and there’s lots of amusing pictures and even video footage of the top space-hopper races to enjoy!  And to return to my opening gambit, people aren’t so bad, are they – indeed, some of them are absolutely fucking brilliant – big thanks to everyone who ‘phoned to pledge some money last night, we had some laughs!

My favourite moment was when a lady from Yorkshire was just hanging up the phone, I could just hear her turn presumably to her husband and say “Eeee, he were lovely!” – brilliant!

I went to see my first boxing match last friday, Carl Froch pummelled Robin Reid (well, he beat him anyway) – the latter having to withdraw due to a dubious claim of an injured shoulder just before the 6th round commenced.  From my unexpert eye it looked like a tactical withdrawal after ‘The Cobra’ had him on his knees in the fifth round!  So a good victory for the Nottingham lad, and hopefully he’ll soon get a shot at a world title!

This week is all about Children in Need – for those of you watching, then keep an eye out for a well known Star Wars character during the coverage, as that’s what I’ll be dressed up as during numerous activities at work during the day to raise funds, as well as taking phone calls in the Boots customer care centre during the evening – so you never know!  It’s an apt costume for me, since the character in question is always thinking with his stomach!

The other exciting thing happening on Friday is that at Boots we’re attempting to break a world record!  Hopefully we will have recruited 500 people to stand in a carpark and participate in the biggest congregation of wobble-boarders to accompany the Rolf Harris song ‘Tie me Kangaroo Down, Sport’ – the current record is held by Airmiles, who assembled an impressive 359 wobblers – we’re going for 500!

Aside from that it threatens to be a boring week since Forest have postponed their weekend game – which would’ve seen me and Rich hotfoot up to Carlisle, although a lie in on saturday will be nice given that I’ll be manning the ‘phones for Children in Need until the early hours of the morning!